Web development

I have been taught the most magical method of submitting tech support requests that make it easy for developers (or anyone!) to understand what the problem is, so that they can hopefully fix it.

I'm slowly training my staff to use this method, and while it takes some getting used to… it's a game changer. Yes, it's helpful when you're trying to tell someone what's busted on a website, but it's also helpful when calling your ISP, or your cable provider, or the person who made your computer. It's basically the best way ever to get help from someone. Here's the template:

Sometimes our anti-spambot tools get confuse and misidentify legit readers as spambots, and dark them out. There's no error, no messaging… there's just NOTHING. You've been darked out. The pages just stop loading. There's no error, no messaging… there's just NOTHING. Here's what to do if you accidentally get darked out.

Oh lord, you guys. It's a race against time to get the Offbeat Bride Tribe relaunched this Tuesday. Parts of it look super slick, but lots of our longtime beloved tools were coded in 2011 and just don't work like they should. We're committed to getting the Tribe back online on December 30th because I feel very strongly about restoring the safe space that Tribe members have come to rely on… but oh man, we're going to be doing a lot of clean-up after things launch. I'm begging Tribe members to be gentle with us after relaunch.

THAT SAID. There are some things that look really fucking cool, and I wanted to share a few sneak peeks.

Thanks to everyone for all your feedback on the redesigns last week. Rolling out the designs on Tuesday was intense on a lot of levels, and I wanted to circle back and let y'all know how things have shaken out.

After months of design and development work, this morning we launched a brand new blog template live across five of the six Offbeat Empire sites. I wanted to share a little bit of the thinking behind some of the aspects of the redesign, so that you understand what my goals were behind some of the changes.

About

The Offbeat Empire is a Seattle-based digital publishing company catered to nontraditional types working their way through the traditional passages of life -- creating a home and committing to a partner.

We want to help our one million monthly readers find ways to express their truest, most authentic, badass selves.